


Who She Was, Who She Is

by Davis (Ihasa)



Series: The Haunted City [3]
Category: Original Work, The Haunted City
Genre: Horror, Short Story, just photon doing her thing, trans protagonist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihasa/pseuds/Davis
Summary: A tryptich about Photon, the most talented witch in The Haunted City. Set at eight, sixteen, and thirty-two years old.
Series: The Haunted City [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984283
Kudos: 1





	1. Miracle Worker

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for some light misgendering/deadnaming, and vague mentions of alcoholism.

She was eight, and she knew things. All sorts of things, usually before any adults did. She knew, for instance, that she was a little girl despite what she had been told. She knew the names of all her robot toys, not just from the cartoon but from the comics, too. She knew where her Daddy kept his secret Not-For-Mommy-You-Understand stash of cookies, and how to climb up the counter to get them without anyone noticing. She knew she wanted her name to be Photon, which she had read in a book. She didn't really know what it meant, except that it was a big, fancy word and she should have a name that sounded smart. Because she knew things. All sorts of things, usually before any adults did. She knew Uncle Georgio had slipped off the wagon again. She knew that when Mommy said she was tired, it really meant she was sick of everything. And she knew that right now, there was a monster in her room.

One day she had known all the names of her robot toys, and the next, she had not. And one day her Mommy had remembered her Daddy's birthday, and the next, she had not. Photon hadn't realized what was happening at first, but one night she had watched her Daddy walk into a dark room, where he suddenly went very still. A second later he came out again, looking tired and asking her why he had gone in there in the first place. It was then that Photon saw that something was Happening. It had taken her almost the whole summer to really notice it, after which she took the task as a personal challenge. It didn't happen every day, but before too long Photon realized there was a pattern to it. Every nine days, someone would forget something important in the dark. Or, as she put it more simply to herself in the pages of her journal, the dark took their memories. 

Photon loved her robot toys, and she loved knowing things, and she loved when her parents weren't fighting, so she had decided to do something. That night, after she had been put to bed she had turned off all the lights, unplugged her night light, and sat down in the middle of the room. She had a box in front of her, a rough wooden thing she usually kept carefully in her dresser, under the bottom drawer. She had the hinge facing her, which was important. She had checked it more than once.

She waited in the dark for a long time. Outside she heard the crickets chirping. Nothing in her room changed. She went over her notes in her head. It was the right day, she knew. It was nighttime. It was dark in her room. She had spent all week memorizing the States and their Capitals. It  _ had _ to come, and it had to come to her. But, as the minutes passed, it just  _ didn't _ . She chewed on her pinkie nail while she thought. She had to be doing something wrong. She knew it had to be there, waiting for her. It had to be calculating something, planning, working it out the way she had. It was always thinking, she thought. It had to be careful so no one would know it was there, like a secret or... and there she had it. It was like Santa, who she did not actually believe in anymore, but the concept was sound. Photon closed her eyes.

Right away it touched her. She didn't move, didn't so much as flinch. She wasn't scared. It was cold, very cold, and it whispered, only not in words. It was, it had, it tried... Photon felt gray and slow. A cold finger pushed through her left eye, painlessly. At school she had learned... this afternoon she had... the capital of Michigan was Lansing. Springfield, Illinois. Little Rock, Arkansas. Juneau, Alaska. She had to keep going. She had to focus. She could do it. She knew she could, because she  _ knew _ things. Frankfort, Kentucky. Augusta, Maine. Tallahassee, Florida. Her hand was on the little box in front of her. She opened it.

The thing  _ rippled _ , almost like it was gasping. It pulled its finger out of her head. She couldn't remember the capitol of Louisiana, or her dog's name. But she knew what was in the box even without opening her eyes. There was a blue rock, and a dried up frog, and a robin's egg. There was a collar from a cat she didn't know, and a butterfly wing, and a drawing she had made. It was precious treasure, all of last summer, the best summer ever, and in her mind's eye it shone like a diamond. It was all her favorite memories, the tastiest meat she could offer the beast. It was a sacrifice, for she knew she would never see any of it again. It was bait.

With a rush and a soft, satisfied hiss the monster in the dark slipped inside the box, and with a loud  _ snap _ Photon shut it tight. The box bucked in her hands, but only for a second. She knew it wouldn't open. It was  _ her _ box,  _ her _ precious treasure. It wouldn't open for anyone but her, obviously. It would be years before she truly comprehended what she had done, the magic she was weaving. She didn't even have time to think about it now, for with a flash her bedroom door opened. Photon hurriedly shoved the box under her bed and turned to face her mother.

“Okay, little man, what are you doing out of bed?” Her mother said wearily. “Don't tell me it's monsters again?”

“Not anymore, Mommy!” Crowed Photon. Her mother scooped her tiny body up under the armpits and deposited her ceremoniously on the bed. She pulled up the rocketship blanket and tucked Photon in tight.

“Right,” she sighed. “Go to sleep, Chuck.”

“I will, Mommy.”

“And no monsters under the bed, okay?”

Photon nodded vigorously.

“I'll move it, Mommy.”

“...Right.”

The door shut behind her mother. Photon waited until she couldn't hear footsteps, struggled out of the blanket and obediently snatched the box from under her bed. She tucked it away under her dresser, where no one would find it. She smiled, and went back to bed. She knew, because she knew things, that this was not going to be the last time she did this.


	2. A Funny Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for mentions of suicide, brief mention of alcoholism, and a brief mention of bullying.

She was sixteen, and she knew things. All sorts of things, usually before anyone else did. She knew, for instance, that she was a teenage girl, despite the betrayal of puberty trying to assert otherwise. She knew that her mother had taken up drinking, again. She knew where to hide her report cards so that her mother wouldn't ask about them. She knew the names of every album she had, every lyric and liner note, every sad, sad song that spoke to her. She knew that she still wanted her name to be Photon, even now that she was older, and knew what it actually meant. It still sounded cool, maybe even mysterious, and it was perfect for a girl like her. Because she knew things. All sorts of things, usually before anyone else did. She knew that she had been followed from school. She knew that they were going to hit her, to drag her down onto the old gray surface of the parking lot. She knew their names, their faces, what awful things they would call her while they tore apart the contents of her backpack. But she had not known, could not have predicted, that they would run up to the abandoned door of The Restaurant, open it without issue, and throw her CD player into the dark room beyond before they ran away.

She had turned into the parking lot of The Restaurant as soon as she had heard them approaching, in the vain hope that they would be scared off by her shortcut through forbidden territory. The Restaurant was the sort of place mothers other than hers told their children not to go, after all. It was an empty sea of blacktop and weeds, and at its center, a building. It had been a Wendy's a few months ago, before it had closed so suddenly that they needed to hang a bright plastic banner to clarify that it was, in fact, not going to open again. It had been boarded up the weekend after that, and the week after that four strong concrete posts had been installed to block any cars from entering the parking lot. She had heard that some people came here to do drugs or something, but she didn't believe it. She knew things, after all, and she knew that no one stayed here longer than they had to. Birds didn't land on the roof. Crickets didn't chirp in the grass. She had watched, from her room in the apartment building the next street over, a pair of dogs chase a squirrel  _ around _ the lot instead of through it. She knew all sorts of things, but she didn't know why this place was the way it was. She did know, as she sat on the pavement wiping her bloodied nose and blinking her weeping eyes, that she was going to have to go in there after her CD player. It had her favorite album in it.

She loved that CD. She knew every word of every song, every note and warble of the singer's voice. She knew every fiber of his flannel shirt, every stringy hair on his head. She had loved him, before he killed himself with a shotgun. She had known he would, too. She had heard it in his words and seen it in his eyes. There was nothing she could have done, but she cried and cried the day it had made the news. Cried like she'd never cried before, and like she believed she never would again. She owed it to him to go and get the album back. That CD, that  _ exact _ CD; the one she'd learned the songs from, the one she'd played so often, stayed up all night to listen to over and over. She couldn't replace it, just like she couldn't replace him. She got up off the pavement and stumbled to the door. She pulled it open. She went inside.

It should have been harder to get in, she thought as she passed through the second set of doors and into the dining area. It should not have been unlocked, just as the handle should not have been exposed. The plywood boards that covered the windows and walls of The Restaurant should have covered it, too. The door must have been locked at some point. She wondered who had opened it, if someone had jimmied the lock or... or something else. She didn't see her CD player inside this door, either. Inside it was dark, the gaps in the boards letting in a dirty gray sort of half-light. Little flecks of dust sparkled in the air as she walked by, scattered lazily when she moved through them. The air smelled stale, and old. It smelled like dry bread and old gray meat, and faintly of ketchup. She walked, transfixed, through the abandoned Wendy's. Plastic tables sat in neat rows, their swivel-chairs still shining dully in the faint light. She ran her hand across a table and rubbed the dust from between her fingers. She took in the vinyl stickers still sitting in the windows, the specials and promotions of three months ago saved forever between the boards and the glass. To her right was the counter. The registers were still there. The stacks of cups were still there. The kitchen was beyond it, dark but still intact from what she could see. It faded into the darkness of the windowless back area. The drink machine was dark, too, but she could see that the Sprite nozzle was dripping slowly, as it always had when The Restaurant had been open. It looked exactly as it had before it had closed, except for the large, shaggy shapes along the walls. They looked like pale bags of garbage, or piles of old, molding rugs. They smelled like old fast food. She had never seen them before, certainly not before The Restaurant had closed. In fact, she wasn't really sure she could see them now. Her eyes slid off them, and when she wasn't thinking of them, she felt she almost forgot them. Like they only existed in her periphery, or she was supposed to just ignore them.

Warily, pretending she didn't see the things in the corners of her eyes, she walked from one end of the room to the other. She scanned the floor and the tables for her CD player. It should have been in the doorway, but it wasn't. If not there, it should have been just beyond the doorway, or somewhere in a straight line from the door, but it wasn't there either. It was gone, somehow eaten up by The Restaurant. She felt fresh, frustrated tears in her eyes, but she blinked them back. She would find it. She had to find it. She walked towards what had been the front of the building, the windows facing the road. It was brighter there, maybe she would find something... 

Photon knew things. She knew, for instance, that she was walking away from the doors, with the dark hole of the kitchen behind her. She knew she was putting distance and obstacles between her and the exit. She knew, also, that the shapes at the corners of her eyes were moving. She kept walking, and she thought. She had a few steps, barely any time, but she planned. Because she was a smart girl. She knew things. She balled up her fists, but she wasn't going to fight. They were moving closer, shuffling almost silently. In a second she knew something was behind her, but she walked to the window before she stopped. She stared at her reflection in the glass, at the hulking shape that surrounded it. She swallowed, and she calmly turned around to look at it.

She had to crane her neck, to look up and up and up. It was nearly as tall as the ceiling, huge and shaggy. It was covered in what looked like pelts, greasy and yellow-white, and stuck between them like shreds of clothing were thin blue sheets of plastic. It had a mask, a long sharp bony thing, like a bleached cow skull. It had big round painted eyes, shining like scuffed red plastic at the top of its mask. The eyes were painted to look down, to look right at her face.

She stamped her foot and held out her hand. She frowned.

“Give it  _ back _ .” She said. Her voice was absorbed by the thing, like she was talking into foam. It smelled like a dumpster. She could hardly breathe for the stench of it.

In response it rustled like a leaf pile. The bags and pelts shook and rattled for a second, then stopped as suddenly as it had started. From the center of it, where she would have assumed its abdomen was, a thin pale arm appeared. It pushed the fur aside as though it were a cloak, as though the actual creature were deep inside. The arm was stick-thin and white as a worm, and patterned with pale blue marks, though if they were veins or tattoos she couldn't tell. A hand, each finger as long as her forearm, opened slowly in front of her. The fingers carefully unfurled, revealing a small hinged box, like the kind that might have held a ring. It was decaying, the velvet peeling away from the plastic like flayed skin from bone. There was no telling what could be inside.

The box gave a tiny, almost imperceptible jerk. She tore her eyes away from the twitching box, looked up at the painted eyes, and shook her head.

“Give it back,” she said, louder this time. The tall creature pulled its arm back in, just as slowly as before. It shook and rattled again. It was like an old vending machine, she thought, the kind that banged and crashed until what you wanted fell out. Behind it, just in the corners of her eyes, She saw the other shapes slowly shuffling closer.

The hand reappeared, a tarnished necklace hanging from one of the thin fingers. On the chain was what looked like a perfect, tiny heart. Its aorta was pierced with a common jumpring, like a bead, but it was beating, unmoving and terrible in its sound. She swallowed hard, crushing her nausea against the inside of her throat. She shook her head and said:

“Give it back,” again. The arm retreated, the thing shivered harder than before. She heard a soft moaning whine from deep inside the pelts, like overtaxed machinery. She felt herself leaning away, but stubbornness kept her sneakers planted where they were on the scummy linoleum. She had to get it back. It wasn't something she could just buy again, she reminded herself. Not this one. He had been too important to her. She owed it to him, she owed him for knowing he was going to die and doing nothing. She had to - 

She choked. The rattling had stopped. The hand had appeared again, and what it held was too big to hide. It was long and black as a freshly poured road, with a wooden stock. She could smell the gunpowder when the creature presented it to her. It was a shotgun.

She looked up, her hand shaking, into the creature's painted eyes, but if it understood the significance it didn't show it. She looked back down. The barrels gazed back up at her, black bottomless holes. She didn't know how to check, but she knew the shotgun was loaded in the same way she knew the sky was blue. She knew it was loaded and primed, ready to go off, and she knew, somehow, that if she just reached out and took it, that maybe it would change something. If she took it, if it was here in her hand, she knew it wouldn't have been  _ there _ . And then he wouldn't have…

The creature stared down at her expectantly. Her hand shook, long fingers trembling. The pale shapes were surrounding her now, pressing in. Her throat was dry. It hurt to breathe the smell of them. She blinked back the tears. No, she thought. She didn't know that. She didn't know what would happen if she took the shotgun. She was a smart girl, a cool, mysterious girl, and she knew things before anyone else did, but she  _ did not know this _ . She gasped, a pained, hopeless half-sob. Her hand curled into a shaking fist, and with her jaw set and her heart on fire, She looked up at the creature. 

“ _ Give it back! _ ” She shouted, and her voice only broke a tiny bit. “ _ Give it back to me! _ ”

The creature recoiled. Its arm pulled back in sharply. It shook violently and made strange gasping sounds. Its mask rolled around on what she assumed were shoulders, like it was tossing its head. And then the mask tore open, chunks and splinters of wood or bone rearranging and reshaping while it choked. Its face was full of teeth, huge ones and tiny ones all growing out of each other like twigs, like budding cells. Photon realized it was smiling at her and nearly screamed. Its eyes, what she had thought were painted plastic eyes on a mask that was not a mask, not a mask at all, rolled madly around in its face. It gawped happily, shuffled and jumped in place, and with an awful rat-a-tat of clicks two arms shot out from its cloak and presented a CD player.

When she dared to take her eyes off that horrible face, she saw it was not her CD player. It  _ looked _ like her CD player, but it was too shiny, too faceted. It was made of gold, she realized, with buttons of a clear shining stone. The headphones looked like brushed silver and black onyx. She looked up at the monstrous face again, ready to tell it one last time that she was not playing around, but it just smiled down at her. It presented the CD player to her again with a slow sweeping gesture. Its huge hands held the shining golden thing like a precious gift, which, she realized, it was. She had passed the test. It was hers now. 

She swallowed her tears and the screams that still echoed inside her head. She smiled up at the creature, who gurgled in response. She held out her hands, and the creature delicately set her CD player on her palms. It was so cold it nearly burned her, but she had to see. She had to know. Her thumb, already pink with cold, flicked the slider on the side of the CD player... and there it was, with her name sticker and the scratches and the chipped edge from when she'd dropped it on the sidewalk. Her favorite album.

“Thank you,” she breathed. The creature bowed to her, its face grinding back into its original position. She nodded her head once, and walked past it. It turned out of her way. Behind it was a wall of pelts and plastic, the other shapes manifested into awful creatures identical to the first one. They stared down at her silently. She walked right up to a pair of them and looked into their eyes. She didn't blink. Neither did they. But they did move out of her way and let her pass. 

She walked, not quickly or slowly, towards the door. She did not look back. She heard them there, shuffling and rustling behind her. She did not look at them when she opened the door. She did not look back when she heard them press, one mass of fur and plastic and maybe flesh, against the glass entryway. She did not look back when she opened the outer door and stepped into the fresh air. 

She put her headphones on. She hit play. She went home. She did not yet know the full weight of what she had done, but she knew, because she knew things, that this was not the last time this sort of thing would happen to her. And she knew, because she knew things, that she would be all right.


	3. A Good First Impression

She was thirty-two, and she knew things. Most things, usually before anyone else did. She knew that she was a woman, and a rather incredible one at that. She knew that a two PHD education really  _ would _ demolish your social life, but that life didn’t end at twenty-eight. She knew where to buy not only shoes, but pants in her size, as well as all the brands that put pockets in skirts. She knew that no one had called her anything but Photon for years, an impressive name, the perfect name for a woman who sat in a folding chair at the end of an alley and observed her experiments. Because she knew things, and she liked to keep it that way. She knew, empirically, that vampires didn’t exist. She knew she lived in the Most Haunted City in America, and more importantly, she knew  _ why _ it was called that. And she knew that the couple behind her were probably not going to be dating after this argument.

In stolen glances, Photon saw them. She had time to observe something other than the experiment. She had exactly ten minutes. The woman, the arguing woman, was tiny and round, with a long, high ponytail of fire-engine red hair and a small button nose. She was furious, fists balled against her thighs, her voice strained and tight and low in her chest. He, presumably her boyfriend, was very large, a dark, hulking shadow in jeans and a sweater so crisp it must be new. He had his hands in his pockets, his posture submissive in spite of his tone.

  
  


“For weeks,” the woman was whispering, “ _ Weeks _ , you say you want to meet these people, and you’re an hour  _ late _ ?”

“I told you when I got here, I got held up, I’m sorry, look, it’s not like you need me to have fun-“

“That’s not why I’m upset! You said- you were being so… so  _ insecure _ about this, and then you can’t even bother to be nice to them when you get here. I told Tomas about you. I told him about your business. He  _ wants _ to talk to you, he  _ tries _ to talk to you, and you don’t even take him seriously. I can’t have your conversations  _ for _ you, Ace.”

“Jolene.” The boyfriend – Ace – snorted. Photon could hear him cross his arms. “Tomas is an  _ asshole _ .”

Photon winced.

“Tomas is one of  _ my  _ oldest friends!”

“Well then why don’t  _ you _ go in there and  _ you  _ have fun with Tomas?”

There was a short sharp breath from Jolene. A string of softly whispered curses in a mix of English and Spanish. Apparently that sentence had carried an accusation she resented.

“Don’t. Just... Don’t do this tonight.”

“I- shit. Jo, I’m sorry, I didn’t-“

“Listen. I’m going to go inside before I say something I’m going to regret.” Photon heard her sigh. Heard her shoes click gently on the pavement. “We’re probably going to have time for a couple more drinks before everyone leaves. If you can stop being- ...If you can be an adult? If you  _ really _ want to meet my friends? Take a sec to cool off and come inside.”

  
  
  


The door opened in a rush of sound, people talking, laughing, muffled music, glasses clinking or sliding or spilling. The sound faded suddenly. Photon heard a sigh, rising to an anguished, exasperated groan. Footsteps. Photon sat up straighter, turned the page of her notebook away from the notes that no one who had had a part in that argument should see.

When Ace broke from the shadows of the alley he slumped against the wall opposite her. She heard his sweater catch on the bricks as he slid down, slowly, deflating into a crouch, head low, hands on the back of his neck.

“I am  _ such  _ an  _ asshole _ ,” he muttered in the general direction of his shoes.

“That was not, perhaps, your finest hour,” said Photon conversationally. Ace’s head jerked up with a shout. He nearly fell over, and as he scuffled to regain his balance Photon saw him clearly. Tremendously tall, hands like hams, round face, large nose. Around her age. Asian. Fat. Very blue aura. Vaguely familiar? She was sure she knew who he was, but also sure she knew she  _ didn’t  _ know of anyone called ‘Ace’. The two facts were giving her trouble.

Ace regarded her with mounting horror, squeezing the phrase “Oh, fuck, you heard that. I’m sorry.” out through a stiff jaw as he struggled for composure and footing. The former he didn’t find, but the latter presented itself as he got to his feet, hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans. The jeans also looked very new, she noticed. She smiled noncommittally at him and looked back up at the apartment building across the street. It wouldn’t be much longer. She checked her notes. She checked her alarm. She checked her gauges and cables. Everything was in order. Everything was perfect. Everything was within arms reach.

  
  
  


“Hey, uh… do I know you?” 

Photon blinked. Oh, yes, Ace was still there. She’d almost forgotten about him. She looked at her timer. Still a little time. 

“It’s entirely possible,” she said. He was leaning out a little, trying to see her face, his thick black eyebrows doing a complicated wobble as he tried to connect what he could see of her in the half-light of the alley to someone he might have seen before. She leaned back and turned her face to him. He saw her eye, or, rather, the glossy black acrylic lens resting comfortably where her left eye used to sit. He smiled, at last recognizing her.

“I knew it - you’ve got that shop on Grovshurr, by the college, right? The, ah-”

“Occult bookstore and magical supply depot.”

“Yeah, with the reiki classes. And the frozen yogurt.”

“And Double Crystal Sundays,” she said, smiling in earnest. She knew him now, the big, polite man who always slouched, who always wore a suit and tie and a day’s worth of thick black stubble. The one who ordered her charms in huge bulk batches and never asked questions other than ‘can this be made’ and ‘how does it activate’. He was like a different person in jeans, with his face cleanly shaven. It was always good to meet a customer, though with the way he ordered she had always suspected him of scalping, and she was certain his name hadn’t been ‘Ace’ last time she took his order.

“Still trying to get rid of all that extra rose quartz, huh?” He asked.

“It was so  _ popular  _ this time last year. Venus was in much better alignment…” she sighed.

“That’s the truth,” he said. He shifted awkwardly, looking at her face for answers. “Uh. It’s… um.”

“Photon Goldman, dear,” she extended her long, thin hand, the beads on her gloves glittering in the light of the streetlamp across the street. He took it and shook, his huge hand remarkably gentle, like an elephant holding a bundle of paintbrushes. 

“And you’re ‘Ace’?” She asked. He blinked in surprise.

“Ace? Oh. Ah, no. No, she’s the only one who… Ariel Park,” he said, coloring slightly. And that was the name Photon remembered him giving. 

“It’s very nice to make your acquaintance.” She said warmly, and turned back to the building across the street. The little gauge next to her foot was starting to wobble between zero and .025. 

“So, uh, I think I’ve got an order pending, do you-”

In a clanging of bass and trumpets and Andre 3000, the alarm on Photon’s phone went off. She tapped it silent, vibrating with excitement, not taking her eye from the building across the street.

“Would you care to observe, Ariel?”

“Observe  _ what _ ?” 

Photon knew things, and knowing was exciting, and learning even moreso. However, knowing was not the same as understanding, and what Photon did not understand was why Ariel Park said ‘what’ the way he had, as though the question frightened him, or as though he had  _ reason  _ to be frightened. Photon laced her fingers and pointed up and across the street, drawing Ariel to look at the apartment building.

On the side of the building, directly across from the alley, was a large yellow streetlight, connected to the brick and mortar with dull metal tubes and brackets. One tube peeked over the edge of the roof of the building, a tooth sticking three inches straight up into the night sky. The lamp was swarmed with the last few moths of the fall. It was completely unobtrusive, completely normal, completely boring. Photon held out her wrist, examined her watch. Held up one finger. She counted, very slowly, to twelve.

The gauge at her foot wobbled closer to .040.

  
  
  


The lamp, perhaps not the whole lamp, not the plastic cover, and not the tubing, but perhaps just the light inside, wavered, as though it were a flame. Photon’s heart gave a little jump. It was exactly on schedule, to the very second. As it always was. As it always had been, every time she had observed it. 

“A nest of wisps?” Said Ariel, shifting to stand a little further from her chair, a little closer to the wall.

“I don’t believe so,” said Photon, her eye only flicking to him for a moment.

One by one the moths slowed to a crawl, their wings flapping weakly. One by one they fell out of the air, spiraling down towards the street. They were dead. Photon knew they were dead, because she had taken samples the last three times she’d seen this. She knew they were electrocuted because she had tested their little moth corpses and found that their little moth insides were cooked. The gauge on the ground was showing its maximum, the needle pressed against the far side of the gauge. The air was beginning to smell like ozone. The second gauge was just starting to show a number, but it was climbing quickly. Photon took the flashlight from her purse.

“Skylights, maybe? This is, what, Klowes Drive, back here? That building’s not empty...” Ariel said, quiet but clear.

Photon, slowly, not taking her eyes off the lamp, attached the cable to the battery under her chair. She began to suspect that Ariel was the kind of person who talked over the movie.

On the wall, the air wobbled. The light shifted, stretching like a sleeper. Above it, on the spike of metal, a pale, thin haze began to form, brightening into a perfect cone of lavender luminescence. Photon glanced at the second gauge. The ambient electricity was stabilizing.

“Saint Elmo’s fire? In  _ this  _ weather?” Said Ariel.

Photon stood up, her galoshes squeaking. She looped the rubber apron over her head. She pulled on her gloves. Ariel stared blankly at her, rising concern on his face.

“Should I move?”

Photon shushed him gently. The lamp moved. Settled. Pulsed. And at last, it flashed. This was what she had been waiting for. She raised the flashlight and flashed back.

There was a pause. The light went very still, if one could call a wobbling, flickering flame ‘still’. After a few seconds, there was a sluggish response: a brighter pulse, like a slowly phrased question. Photon smiled and licked her lips, barely able to contain her excitement as she shone her light at the lamp. Faster now, it flickered out a pattern. She flicked out the same pattern with the flashlight. It did three short, one long. She copied. She said:

“It does this every third Tuesday,” to Ariel. “At  _ precisely  _ eleven thirteen and twenty-one seconds, PM. Always by the clock. It doesn’t change for daylight savings in the slightest.”

“Always the same pattern?”

“Oh yes, always the same. It even takes the same time to respond, like an echo. After awhile it seems to get bored, and it fades.”

“Fascinating,” said Ariel, as though he were being choked. He backed away a little more. “And, uh, that? It usually does that?”

Photon looked. A ray of light was pulling away from the central mass, squirming across the bricks like a flailing arm. As intangible and nonthreatening as the beam of her flashlight… until it found one of the metal supports and grabbed, the ray taking shape into something more than light.

A second ray, and another, and something pulled itself out of the plastic lamp, dragged itself across the bricks. It was bigger than the lamp. Bigger than the light. A few windows to the left, a cat jumped away into the apartment its ears back. The thing on the wall shivered, crackled. It was like a horse in all the ways it wasn’t like a person. It was like a person only in the ways it wasn’t like a horse. It was, Photon thought, mostly like an ocean.

“Ooh! Oh, no, that’s new!” Said Photon. Ariel made a small animal noise down in his throat, dug furiously into a pocket. Photon’s knees bent. Photon knew things, and right now the most important thing Photon knew was exactly what she was doing. She had prepared for this. It should have had enough time to prime by now.

The light hung on the wall, waves and arms and hooves splayed. Its head - it was like a head only in that it wasn’t a body - turned. Rolled. Looked at them. No.

No.

Looked at Ariel Park. Looked  _ only  _ at Ariel Park.

And then several interesting things happened at roughly the same time.

  
  
  


One. 

Photon looked at Ariel, too, just in time for the creature, appendages and all, to leap. Strike. Attack. It moved as an arc, rooted to its lamp, connected the space it was in with the space across from it. The space was occupied by Ariel, and Photon was moving, knew what she was doing, felt the weight in her hand as she stooped and grabbed, but it was fast, it was too fast, it was  _ light _ , and even with a name like Photon, she was only flesh.

  
  
  


Two.

“ _ Trezor! _ ”

Lost in the panicked shout there was a barely audible  _ snap _ , and then a bright sick twist as the world convulsed. Photon’s stomach turned over, turned inside out, turned to jelly in a white, stabbing cube of memory, the taste of the worst cup of coffee she’d ever had, no, she swept her hand through miles of crystal cobwebs, not a memory not a memory but

Magic. Big magic, old magic,  _ bone  _ magic, washed over her, but that it  _ was  _ magic wasn’t important, wasn’t nearly as interesting as that she knew this was  _ her  _ magic,  _ her  _ spell, one of  _ her  _ charms in Ariel’s hand. A rabbit’s foot, rainbow dyed, on a cheap keychain. One little furry toe was broken in his big fingers. And from the broken shard of bone in his hand, a blue film was rushing over his body, faster than the wave of living light, faster than the strike of the creature.

  
  
  


Three.

It hit him. Slammed into him, the arc of its motion shoving him back into the wall. She saw his chest flinch, saw his mouth move, saw the sharp exhale as the wind was knocked out of him, his gasp silenced inside the spell. Blue sparks bounced off the bricks, off his chest. The creature howled like a powerline at the height of summer in what might have been pain, doubling back, lashing away, burned or hurt or just annoyed by the spell of protection a shattered rabbit bone could buy you.

  
  
  


Four.

Photon jabbed the copper pipe in her hand into what she might have called center mass on something more corporeal, passing without resistance into its body. She had to stop herself, had to force herself to plant her galoshes against the pavement, to keep from falling into the bright horror of its shape. Even with all her rubber shielding, the prickle of voltage snapped and bit at her exposed skin.

  
  
  


Five.

Cause followed effect in exactly the way it was supposed to. The twelve-volt car battery in her hand, attached to the inverting circuit, attached to the jumper cable, attached to the pipe in her other hand, sent a tremendous charge into the creature. The voltage, taking the path of least resistance, arced through the thing and raced towards the nearest path to the ground in a whip-crack of lightning.

  
  
  


Six.

The lamp, the light, the Luxiform, whatever one thought of as the main body of the creature, shorted out in a blinding flash. Exactly as Photon had predicted.

  
  
  


Everything went very quiet. Photon, her one eye blinded by the flash, remembered safety and held the copper pipe in the opposite direction from where Ariel was. Down the street, a car alarm went off, but this had nothing to do with what they were doing.

The white blobs in Photon’s eye blinked away, clearing her vision as slowly as if she were defrosting her windshield. Still half blind, a phrase she recognized the irony of, she detached the cable from the battery, leaving both harmless. Ariel slumped against the wall. She started to hear his breathing, which told her his shield had dissipated.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“Oh I do hope you’re all right!” She said, patting him in the general area of his shoulder. He babbled something about being sore, said something about what the thing might have been. Photon wasn’t really paying him much attention. She squinted across the street, blinking the last spots out of her eye. There was a faint, hazy glow in the plastic cover of the lamp, gently pulsing. The light had not gone out. Still alive, then, she thought. Good. While it wasn’t always true in the Most Haunted City in America, things were often less fun to observe when they were dead.

She looked back at Ariel, still stiff and wide-eyed in his new, uncomfortable clothes. It occurred to her that, even with him slouching and her standing at her full height, he dwarfed her, and she was not a short woman by any standard. He still had her charm, mostly hidden inside his huge hand. She could just see the number of toes left, the number of charges of the spell remaining in that little disembodied limb. The number was zero.

“I’ll have your order ready this week,” she said vaguely. Photon knew things, but she didn’t know everything yet. She didn’t know what could make something that had never moved expose itself like that, much less attack a man. She didn’t know what could make a man she had assumed was a scalper, who she now knew  _ couldn’t  _ be, carry a protective charm as potent as hers out on what seemed to be a casual get together. How strange, she thought. How singular. How  _ fascinating _ .

A few someones came out of the bar and lit up behind them. Ariel looked at them, his jaw set. The excitement over, he seemed to have remembered where he was.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you really ought to go in, Ariel.” Photon said. Ariel frowned.

“Ugh, right.” He sighed, resigned. He scratched his chin. “Thanks. And, uh, thanks for…”

He pointed to the car battery.

“No trouble,” said Photon. “No trouble in the slightest.”

She didn’t watch him go. 


End file.
